A Galway woman and her eight-year-old daughter had all the signs and symptoms of a bad viral infection before Christmas. They developed an overwhelming tiredness, an uncontrollable cough and copious amounts of phlegm. This was particularly evident at night when their sleep was disturbed.
The cough was unusual - a violent spasm accompanied by a terrifying feeling of suffocation. Mother Angela and daughter Sophie had the typical "whooping" sound associated with the illness. Both suffered from vomiting at the end of each coughing spasm.
Typically they had these coughing bouts between 15 and 25 times in a 24-hour period. Other family members, who had been vaccinated against the disease, developed a bad cough but not the classical "whoop". Angela, who was born in another country where routine immunisation against whooping cough is not carried out, and Sophie, who only received the two-in-one vaccine, were more severely affected. All the family received antibiotic treatment; despite this, Sophie and Angela have still not recovered.
Whooping cough or pertussis is an infection of the respiratory tract caused by a bacterium called bordatella pertussis. Bordatella means violent cough. The Chinese call it "the cough of 100 days", reflecting the chronic nature of the paroxysmal, persistent cough.
Pertussis is highly infectious, with attack rates of 90-100 per cent in non-immune households. Vaccination confers up to 95 per cent protection for the first three years, but immunity wanes to about 10 per cent 12 years after vaccination.
Pertussis can cause severe pneumonia in infants who have not been immunised; this is why the vaccination is administered at two, four and six months. Two per cent develop seizures as a result of whooping cough. An infection of the brain - encephalitis - occurs in 0.7 per cent of cases.